A publisher affiliated to the University of Rochester, NY, is vying for a share of the small US market for foreign literature.

Open Letter Books wants to grant English-speaking readers "full access to voices and viewpoints from around the world," according to company director Chad W Post, speaking to the New York Times last week.

To fulfill this mission, Open Letter publishes nothing but English translations of foreign fiction, a niche that represents just three percent of the US book market. Its six titles a year have included The Sailor from Gibraltar by French novelist Marguerite Duras and The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel) by the Argentinian Macedonio Fernández.

In 2010, it will broaden to publish its first poetry collection.

The publisher's marketing strategy includes a blog, Three Percent, which receives over two million hits a year. Open Letter is also tied to a University of Rochester Literary Translation Studies program, whose students often do internships with the company.

Other branding initiatives have included a public reading with luminaries of modern literature Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco.

None of the press's 16 titles has sold more than 3,000 so far, but Open Letter continues to expand, concerned more with promoting quality foreign literary works than with finding the next bestseller.

Translator Clifford Landers told the Times that "commercial publishing houses have become infected with the jackpot mentality. But Open Letter creates an outlet for works that are not expected to have broad popular appeal but nonetheless are of important value in a literary sense."

27 December 2009